Starting in what seems to be August, Marvel will be canceling Spectacular Spider-Man and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, cutting back to the one core title: Amazing Spider-Man. However, we can rest assured that Marvel isn’t content to allow Spider-fans to retain their cashflow – instead, now Amazing Spider-Man will begin coming out three times a month.
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The new game from Riddick developer Starbreeze will be out very soon, and I cannot wait. It based on the comic The Darkness, and aside from the usual FPS antics I’ve grown to enjoy, it employs a mechanic where in the player gains demonic powers when stepping out of the light. Fantastic. The voices for those demons are provided by Mike Patton, best known as the singer for Faith No More.

The Darkness on Xbox 360 and PS3 will be out June 25.

Boys #7
written by Garth Ennis, art by Darick Robertson

DON’T FORGET, NEW COMICS ON THURSDAY THIS WEEK.

So anyway, I think I’ve made it clear I’m not a big fan of this series. That said, there are a lot of people out there who ADORE this book, and I definitely don’t begrudge them that. There is, after all, a lot to like about this book. It takes a good hard look at what people do with power, and how people with superpowers might behave. And it thumbs its nose HARD at all such aspects.

What’s worth mentioning is that this book has been on a bit of a hiatus for the last few months because DC dropped it like it was on fire. Apparently they didn’t like the Superman analogue having a gerbil in his butt. Or something to that effect. Regardless, not only has the book begun again, but the trade of the first 6 issues is coming out on the exact same day, letting people get caught up with what’s already been released all in one fell swoop.

It’s a solid book, and honestly, if you can handle graphic violence and the sex, you might want to give this one a good try. You’re not likely to be disappointed.

I’m a big fan of Johua Middleton‘s art. Especially his cover art. In his blog, Josh has noted that he posted a youTube video showing the creation process of a comic cover he worked on from the pencils to the final rendering. This cover is from the DC series Outsiders with the story focusing on Aquaman and Metamorpho. Its interesting to note that he mentions being told that the new Aquaman is actually a teen, so when he showed the editorial staff the final version of the picture, they wanted him to make him look older, which is certainly a challenge for an already finished piece of art. Check out the blog entry for the full background, but here is the video:

Josh has posted a few other very similar and very cool videos on youTube of him sketching. You check his youTube account here.

As part of Spider-man week, Marvel.com has posted a video of Ralph Macchio at the New York Public Library describing the life of a comic book from start to finish. Its a pretty neat clip, so I’ve included it below:

Recently, we reported on the revelation of Heath Ledger as the Joker in the upcoming Batman movie. The site that once showed the defaced Harvey Dent campaign poster and then the frightening image of Ledger in character, IbelieveinHarveyDentToo.com, has been updated once more. The page shows a message of “Page Not Found.” However, if you highlight the entire page, you see hidden text. Essentially its HA HA HA over and over and over again in varying font sizes and capitalization. Interspersed among the H’a and A’s are randomly inserted letters. Being the lazy person I am, I copied the entirety of the hidden text into Textpad, my text editor of choice, and did a search for H, A, a and h and replaced with a null (“”).

The results: Pgenotfound.seeYOuInDECeMbER

Criminal #6
written by Ed Brubaker, art by Sean Phillips

Captain America #26 comes out this week, following up on his almighty death from last issue. Last week was the closing (of sorts) to the year-long “Rise & Fall of the Shi’ar Empire” in Uncanny X-Men. Daredevil dares to be a devil. Or so I presume. What do all of those books have in common with Criminal? Writer Ed Brubaker.

This guy is in the absolute top tier of comic writers today, and while he’s banging out some popular hits on the mainstream Marvel titles, what’s slipped under too many radars is that he’s been writing one hell of a book in Criminal. The first five issues were a single storyarc, and they were simply fantastic. The story started about a heist that went bad, and then it went worse, and then it went even worse. I cannot recommend these issues enough, and if you haven’t read them, you can buy them now for real cheap in trade paperback.

This week, we begin a new storyarc with a new main character. Phillips and Brubaker are starting (almost) over from scratch, so if you skipped the first 5, then forget it, it’s fine – you have a second chance to start fresh with this book. Here’s the promo text:

Twenty years ago, Tracy Lawless traded the crime-ridden streets of the city for a life in the military, and it’s a decision he’s rarely regretted. But now he’s walking out of the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq and back into the world he grew up in, to find out who killed his brother Rick, and why. But truth is one of the few things uglier than family history, and the only thing Tracy has in his favor as he unravels the twisted strands of the criminal life his brother led, is that no one knows who the hell he is. And what they don’t know, just might kill them